In Europe for years, Kurdish activists at risk of deportation to Iran

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A human rights watchdog has reported that two Kurdish activists and asylum seekers, both residents of Scandanavian nations, are at risk of being deported to Iran where either would be highly likely to face political persecution.

Chiya Qaderi, born 1991, has been living in Denmark for 12 years and has never even been to Iran, a report by rights group Hengaw claimed on Tuesday. He was reportedly born to Iranian-Kurdish parents on Mount Qandil in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq at the base of an armed group that opposes the Iranian government.

He also has never held an Iranian nationality identification card, the rights monitor added.

Norwegian police, following a court order, went to Qaderi’s place of residence on June 31 to detain him. Hengaw said he had refused to go with the officers who gave him two weeks to appeal the court ruling to deport him to Iran.

Should the legal authorities reject the man’s appeal, Qaderi would be sent to Iran, where he could face “serious consequences” from the Tehran government. His mother, according to the report, is a refugee in Norway as well. His father, however, died as a fighter for the opposition Iranian Kurdistan Democratic Party (PDKI).

The second individual has been an asylum seeker in Denmark since 2015 and was denied refugee status two years ago, the rights watchdog said. He has since been reportedly living in a camp for rejected applicants. Danish authorities have told him that he is to be deported back to Iran, the report added.

Mohammed Haidarpour, 35, who was born in the Kurdish-majority western region of Iran, told Hengaw that he is currently in “physical and mental distress.” He said, however, that Danish authorities had assured him he would be in “no danger” if and when he returns to Iran. Such a claim is highly questionable, given Tehran's history of arrests and human rights abuses against Iranian Kurds with connections to opposition groups. 

Related Article: Iran executes Kurdish political prisoners convicted in ‘unfair’ trial: Reports

Haidarpour also called on human rights organizations to come to his aid and prevent his deportation.

Hengaw claims it has recorded several instances of Kurdish activists being deported back to Iran from European countries. Iranian security forces allegedly killed one deportee under torture, the group said, and multiple others have either been sentenced to prison or their fate is unclear.

These two cases come as the Iranian government has intensified a crackdown campaign against Kurdish activists in recent months, imprisoning minority rights advocates by the dozens, even as the new coronavirus disease continues to spread in detention facilities.

According to a separate report by the rights monitor, Iranian forces have arrested over 50 Kurds in July alone. Authorities have detained 47 of them on charges of political activism and connections with opposition groups. The rest are civil rights and religious freedom activists.

Executions, which Amnesty International says Tehran is increasingly using as “a weapon of repression,” have also increased. The United Nations rights experts condemned as “unlawful” one of the killings, which it said, “took place in secret after an enforced disappearance.”

At least ten death sentences against Kurdish prisoners were implemented in July. Two were political activists and the rest were convicted of premeditated murder. 

Editing by John J. Catherine